Article
Implementation of General Sustainability Objectives as Tools
to Improve the Environmental Performance of Industry
Richard Almgren * and Olof Hjelm
Citation: Almgren, R.; Hjelm, O.
Implementation of General
Sustainability Objectives as Tools to
Improve the Environmental
Performance of Industry.
Sustainability 2021, 13, 8144. https://
doi.org/10.3390/su13158144
Academic Editor: João Carlos de
Oliveira Matias
Received: 17 May 2021
Accepted: 6 July 2021
Published: 21 July 2021
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4.0/).
Department of Management and Engineering, Environmental Technology and Management,
Linköping University, SE-58183 Linköping, Sweden; olof.hjelm@liu.se
* Correspondence: richard.almgren@liu.se; Tel.: +46705688112
Abstract:
This article examines the implementation of the Swedish national environmental quality
objectives and discusses what can be learned for the equivalent process for the set of global UN
2030 goals (SDGs), established in 2015. The empirical basis is a study on 50 large companies in
Sweden and their use of these objectives in their policy formulation. The SDGs are crafted with a
broader approach than the Swedish national environmental quality objectives. Therefore, the SDGs
probably better reflect the agenda of the business community since they have a global character,
cover the whole spectrum of important sustainability issues and provide a mutual agenda for the
business community worldwide. More than 90 percent of the large companies in the study have
explicitly committed themselves to the SDGs, only 1–2 years after they were published, whereas
similar commitments hardly exist for the national environmental quality objectives, even 20 years
after their establishment. A large majority of the large companies in this study know about the SDGs,
have actively endorsed them, and started to adjust their activities accordingly. In the end, the results
of these endorsements remain to be seen.
Keywords:
agenda 2030; sustainability goals; national environmental quality objectives; industry;
integration; implementation
1. Introduction
The basic idea behind environmental policy in the business sector is to make compa-
nies change their agendas to take environmental considerations into account [
1
–
4
]. Many
different environmental policy instruments have been developed for this purpose, mostly
to advocate for certain behavior by using different kinds of legislation, such as environmen-
tal permitting systems and restrictions on the production and use of certain chemicals and
other products. A comprehensive review of research on environmental policy instruments
was made by the OECD [
4
]. Since then, a number of similar studies have been performed
(for example, [
5
–
11
]). Other ways to improve environmental performance are to change
the incentives in the market, such as by public procurement, financial support or subsidies,
trading of emissions like the trading system of greenhouse gases EU ETS [
12
] in the EU
or by fees. Furthermore, more soft incentives commonly used are improved knowledge,
such as to initiate education and training, perform information campaigns, support the
use of life cycle analysis and other means to improve the environmental characteristics
of products [
13
,
14
], ask for declarations of the use of energy, support the use of labelling
of products with certain features, certify persons or organizations, such as environmental
management systems based on ISO 14001 of international environmental management
standard [
15
], and encourage transparency by systematic reporting, such as reports based
on the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) [16].
Belonging to the same group of soft policy instruments are non-legislated general
policy objectives or systems targeted at a broad audience. These are implemented entirely
as a voluntary action. It is not unusual for governments to use objectives, targets and
Sustainability 2021, 13, 8144. https://doi.org/10.3390/su13158144 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/sustainability
